Piltdown Superman

NASA Photo C ritics of biblical creation sometimes use distant starlight as an argument against a young universe. The argument goes something like this: (1) there are galaxies that are so far away, it would take light from their stars billions of years to get from there to here; (2) we can see these galaxies, so their starlight has already arrived here; and (3) the universe must be at least billions of years old—much older than the 6,000 or so years indicated in the Bible. Many big bang supporters consider this to be an excellent argument against the biblical timescale. But when we examine this argument carefully, we will see that it does not work. The universe is very big and contains galaxies that are very far away, but that does not mean that the universe must be billions of years old. Read the rest of "Does Distant Starlight Prove the Universe Is Old?" here .

NASA Photo Astronomers have found a mysterious star that is made almost entirely of hydrogen and helium gas. According to naturalistic star formation theories, the star shouldn't exist, since it is missing massive quantities of heavier elements like oxygen, carbon, and iron, as well as lightweight lithium. According to the Bible's account of star formation, however, the existence of such a star is no puzzle at all. In their study published in Nature , researchers determined the makeup of the star, named SDSS J102915+ 172927, by analyzing the light it emitted. Lead author Elisabetta Caffau said in a European Southern Observatory press release, "A widely accepted theory predicts that stars like this, with low mass and extremely low quantities of metals, shouldn't exist because the clouds of material from which they formed could never have condensed." Read the rest of "Lightweight Star Should Not Exist" here .

by Cowboy Bob Sorensen Edited 12-06-2015 I was quite pleased to see an article that was discussing some of the same things that I have been combating in my discussions with anti-creationists . More specifically, their double standards. It amazes me that any unqualified s hmoe off the street is "qualified" to rail against remarks and articles by creationists, and is joined by a dozen "Me, too!" interlopers. Yet, if someone dares breathe a word of disagreement about evolution, he or she is expected to have impeccable credentials in every area under discussion. That is, I point out a flaw in evolutionary theory, and get asked if I am trained as a scientist . Qualifications or not, we can still speak the truth and can identify bad logic that people are using when attempting to liberate us from our knowledge and faith. Atheist popes like Richard Dawkins are cited as experts on religion and philosophy, but guess what? They are do not satisfy the qualification "st

Several times a week, I am hit with faith-based comments where the users believe they are speaking "science" in defense of evolutionism (links to sources are given, until they get embarrassed and delete their comments): Evolution is   as much science as quantum theory is. To claim otherwise is totally absurd. Note the equivocation between evolution and quantum theory, followed by a form of   ad hominem   attack. Edit: My charge of ad hominem  was challenged. I verified it with two experts, one said it was abusive ad hominem, the other narrowed it further to Appeal to Ridicule , which can fall under the "umbrella" of ad hominem . Proof   has been steadily accumulating over 150 years, as science advances more appears. that's how science works.  Wrong.   True  science is willing to discard a theory if the facts do not fit instead of making excuses, wishing that an answer will come along someday, or faking the data. Also,   tru

A well-publicised paper by Claudia Huber and Günter Wächtershäuser in Science proposed a scenario for a materialistic origin of life from non-living matter. They correctly state: The activation of amino acids and the formation of peptides under primordial conditions is one of the great riddles of the origin of life. Indeed it is. The reaction to form a peptide bond between two amino acids to form a dipeptide is: Amino acid 1 + amino acid 2 → dipeptide + water H 2 NCHRCOOH +H 2 NCHR′COOH → H 2 NCHRCONHCHR′COOH + H 2 O (1) The free energy change(ΔG 1 ) is about 20–33 kJ/mol, depending on the amino acids. The equilibrium constant for any reaction (K) is the equilibrium ratio of the concentration of products to reactants. The relationship between these quantities at any Kelvin temperature (T) is given by the standard equation: K = exp ( –ΔG / RT ) where R is the universal gas constant (= Avogadro’s number x Boltzmann’s cons

Responding to “How far has ID come in the last five years?”, locally famous commenter markf responds, Every single one of those headlines is about “Darwinism” and “Darwinists” (whoever they are – their most important common characteristic appears to be they are government funded which rules me out). Looking at the detail on the posts the only positive achievement I can see for ID is the controversial Dembski and Marks paper. All the rest is about perceived failures of this Darwinism. Which is an excellent demonstration of missing the point. Failures of Darwinism are not merely a negative. They are a positive. The growing number of stress points at which Darwinism fails can, taken together, form a picture, one that points to general laws that govern how high levels of information are produced in life forms. Obviously, as with dpi, the more such points, the clearer the picture. We can’t have too many of them, though eventually, there will be enough to work productively with

Viruses have a bad reputation. They are ultra-tiny, well-designed machines that copy themselves in a process that sometimes causes disease in the organisms in which they reside. One class called retroviruses is equipped with machinery that splices its own viral code into the DNA of a host cell. Retroviruses have been portrayed as genetic "leftovers" from an evolutionary past, but how did they really originate? A report published in Science showed how one retrovirus was "born." Researchers discovered that a retrovirus named XMRV was formed when two DNA sequences called "proviruses" were brought together through "recombination." This occurs during gamete development when genetic material from the parent cells is rearranged into new combinations of genes in the offspring, resulting in more genetic variations. You can catch the rest of "Were Viruses Created or Evolved?" here .

We’re sure you’ve heard this claim before, probably hundreds of times: “Science has proven evolution is fact.” It’s like a strange Darwinian chant that emanates from atheist blogs and secular universities. Too bad (for them) it’s not true.  In fact, refuting evolution doesn’t require complicated equations or lab experiments—though those do the job, too. Just remember the two fundamental flaws we can use to show evolution to be, well, not even scientifically viable.  Where’d You Get Your Information, Bub? Everything that makes up your body requires genetic information. You’ve got hands and feet because your genes code for it. The same is true for any creature—dogs, camels, you name it. Read the rest of "Evolution: Impossible!" here .

Evolutionary teachers often use equivocation to indoctrinate unsuspecting students with the general theory of evolution (GTE). Anti-creationists, such as atheists by definition, commonly object that creation is religion and evolution is science. To defend this claim they will cite a list of criteria that define a ‘good scientific theory’. A common criterion is that the bulk of modern day practising scientists must accept it as valid science. Another criterion defining science is the ability of a theory to make predictions that can be tested. Evolutionists commonly claim that evolution makes many predictions that have been found to be correct. They will cite something like antibiotic resistance in bacteria as some sort of ‘prediction’ of evolution, whereas they question the value of the creationist model in making predictions. Since, they say, creation fails their definition of ‘science’, it is therefore ‘religion’, and (by implication) i

The claim that all, or most all, Darwin-doubters are fundamentalist Christians is commonly found in both in the popular and professional scholarly literature. Ohio State University Professor Tim Berra averred, “Creationists, for the most part, are fundamentalist Christians whose central premise is a literal interpretation of the Bible and a belief in its inerrancy” (Berra 1990, p. viii). Professor Douglas Futuyma, in his classic work attacking all Darwin-doubters, mentioned Christian fundamentalists or the term fundamentalists in connection with those who have problems with Darwinism over 14 times on pages 5 to 7 alone. He concluded that the Christian “fundamentalists assault” on science involves the challenge to evolution that was “mounted by religious fundamentalists [adversely] touches us all” (Futuyma 1983, p. 5).  Futuyma then adds, “according to the fundamentalists, physicists are wrong” and all “geology is under siege” by Christian “fundamentalists” and “in the

A free and independent press? Not quite. Our national media do not always operate at arms-length from state-backed science, as the California Science Center (CSC) affair has demonstrated.  As you probably know by now, in 2009 the state-run CSC cancelled a contract with the American Freedom Alliance (AFA) to screen a pro-ID documentary, Darwin's Dilemma , triggering a lawsuit over unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination. That lawsuit was recently settled. By the terms of the settlement agreement, the Science Center paid $110,000 and again opened its doors to the film, an invitation that was acknowledged by AFA as an apology and then respectfully declined for pragmatic reasons.  True, the Science Center did not explicitly admit in the agreement that it engaged in viewpoint discrimination, but the large payout and invitation may be taken as an implicit admission that its defense regarding the viewpoint discrimination claim was weak, and that a public trial should

You've heard a lot in this space the past few days about the viewpoint-discrimination lawsuit settled by the California Science Center for $110,000. That's money the CSC found it advisable to pay out to the American Freedom Alliance in order to avoid having to go to court and argue the case in public, with all that would have entailed by way of exposing a trail of incriminating emails by CSC staffers and scientists around the Los Angeles area. Lead by Casey Luskin, ENV writers have already very clearly spelled out the evidence of duplicity and intolerance on the part of the California Science Center, the panicky attempt to squelch the airing of a viewpoint favorable to intelligent design and the subsequent cover-up. Now that there's a little bit of a breather following the widespread reporting of the settlement, I'd like to suggest why the whole thing matters so much. Read the rest of "Stampede! What the California Science Center Scandal Reveals about

The state-run California Science Center (CSC) has paid $110,000 to settle a lawsuit by American Freedom Alliance (AFA) against CSC for violating AFA's First Amendment free speech rights to advocate intelligent design (ID). As part of the settlement, the CSC also has invited AFA to present the ID event it previously cancelled.  CSC rented its IMAX theater to AFA to show Darwin's Dilemma , a science documentary advocating ID. However, when CSC learned the film would portray ID favorably, CSC cancelled AFA's event. AFA filed suit in California Superior Court alleging viewpoint discrimination and breach of contract. Read the rest of "California Science Center Pays $110,000 to Settle Intelligent Design Discrimination Lawsuit" here .

The vertebrate eye is very well-constructed. Its many critical parts work together so that individual light photons are captured and converted into data that the brain then translates into a coherent visual image. Considering the obvious genius and purpose in eye design, claims that mindless natural processes formed the eye can only be made by ignoring the laws of logic. Recently, Australian neuroscientist Trevor Lamb wrote a  Scientific American  article titled "Evolution of the Eye." He included a narrated history, as if he had witnessed an actual eyeball evolve. But instead of providing scientific evidence, his presentation relied on logical fallacies.   First, Lamb granted god-like intelligence to an inanimate force he termed "selective pressures." He wrote, "As body size increased, so, too, did the selective pressures favoring the evolution of another type of eye: the camera [vertebrate] variety." But only an intelligent agent—not passive, unth

Life depends on an incredible enzyme called ATP synthase, the world’s tiniest rotary motor.   This tiny protein complex makes an energy-rich compound, ATP ( a denosine t ri p hosphate). Each of the human body’s 14 trillion cells performs this reaction about a million times per minute. Over half a body weight of ATP is made and consumed every day!  All living things need to make ATP, often called the “energy currency of life”. ATP is a small molecule with a big job: to provide immediately usable energy for cellular machines. ATP-driven protein machines power almost everything that goes on inside living cells, including manufacturing DNA, RNA, and proteins, clean-up of debris, and transporting chemicals into, out of, and within cells. Other fuel sources will not power these cellular protein machines for the same reasons that oil, wind, or sunlight will not power a gasoline engine. Read the rest of "ATP synthase: majestic

Here is the second of two articles that originally appeared elsewhere ( Part 1 is here ). I have edited this one a bit as well. The sceptic-tank-ical approach. That is, the constant denial of evidence. Absolutes If you insist on irrefutable, absolute proof before you will accept or believe something, you will have pitifully little to believe  at all.  What would happen in the court systems if they took that approach? Witnesses are  expected  to differ on details because of their knowledge, observations, personalities and whatever else; everyone has their own perspective. They use  reasonable  evidence, and not just iron-clad positive proof. Otherwise, there would be few convictions indeed. Edit: Demanding physical proof of a transcendent God is a category mistake , a logical fallacy. It's funny in a way that "everyone knew" that Casey Anthony was guilty, and were outraged that she was found not guilty. But "everyone" was not in the courtroo